Fallen knight, part 1: Schofield prosecutor Victoria Avalon's tragic betrayal of her oath
Avalon's strong words about SCOTUS corruption and Florida's rigged system of picking judges are rendered ridiculous by her failure, dishonesty and cowardice in the Schofield case.
Be without fear in the face of your enemies. Be brave and upright that God may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless. And do no wrong. — Victoria Avalon, director of appellate and civil litigation for the 10th Circuit’s State’s Attorney’s Office, opening her interview May 3, 2023 before the Florida Supreme Court’s Judicial Nominating Commission.
She was quoting a speech by Liam Neeson’s character in the 2005 film “Kingdom of Heaven,” which tells the story of knights in the Crusades. You can see Neeson’s performance of the speech here.
On mid-morning of May 3, 2023, Republican State Senator Jonathan Martin, a former prosecutor, addressed the Florida Commission on Offender Review in Tallahassee.
Martin, who chairs the Senate’s criminal justice committee, urged the immediate release of Leo Schofield. Martin emphasized that Schofield’s ongoing, obviously wrongful 1989 conviction for killing his wife in Lakeland has cast doubt on the entirety of Florida’s criminal justice system.
Everything that I’ve seen about this case turns my stomach. I don’t know why Leo Schofield wasn’t released years ago when he went before this board…
… I stand by the criminal justice system here in the state of Florida. We’re one of the best on the planet. But there’s a whole lot of doubt right now about how good we are. You guys have the chance today to restore credibility to a system that thousands of people know an injustice happened and is continuing every single second that Leo Schofield is behind bars.
Nevertheless, the FCOR denied Schofield parole again, thanks in large part to the organizational efforts of Victoria Avalon, director of appellate and civil litigation for the 10th Circuit’s State’s Attorney’s Office. See this episode of the Bone Valley podcast for details on Avalon’s role. Over the years, Avalon has been one of the most fervent voices arguing that no Polk County jury should ever get a chance to reconsider the 1989 Schofield conviction despite the vast exculpatory evidence that emerged starting in 2004.
Avalon wasn’t actually in Tallahassee on May 3rd to see her latest Schofield work successfully “turn stomachs” yet again. She was in Orlando, asking the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission (JNC) to send her name to Gov. Ron DeSantis as candidate for Supreme Court justice.
About three hours after Sen. Jonathan Martin rightly trashed the 10th Circuit’s performance in the entire 35-year Schofield case, Avalon opened her pitch for the Supreme Court. She did so with a performative recitation of Liam Neeson’s stirring “Kingdom of Heaven” speech, highlighted above.
Avalon: we’re in a “crisis” of judicial legitimacy
I’m going to revisit the entirety of Victoria Avalon’s strange and profound performance at the JNC in future articles. For now, I would just urge you to watch the full 20 minutes or so. I’ve clipped it below. It has implications far far beyond Leo Schofield’s case. Here’s a good summary article from the Florida Phoenix. One key excerpt from that article.
Avalon asserted during her interview, one of 15 the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission heard that day, that doubts about judicial legitimacy have reached “crisis” level.
“We are in a crisis in our country,” she said.
“You cannot turn on the television or streaming news without seeing the highest court in this land embroiled in scandal day after day after day. The highest justices in our system accused of improprieties — of taking expensive gifts, expensive vacations,” she said.
In the abstract, I agree with almost everything Victoria Avalon said to the JNC.
From a different person, it would make a powerful indictment of what ails Florida’s failed legal system and government as a whole — which I would describe as a toxic indifference to the actual civic and moral merits of any public situation or issue or person. (More on that in a future article.)
But this indictment came from Victoria Avalon, fierce representative of the failed 10th Judicial Circuit of Florida, which embodies that aversion to merits — in the Schofield case and beyond. That radically alters the meaning of what Avalon said. So today, I’m focusing narrowly on the Schofield case implications of Avalon’s dramatic interview.
A knight unstruck
In her opening remarks, Avalon explained her use of the Neeson character’s speech.
They are the oath of a knight from the 2005 movie “Kingdom of Heaven.” They’re powerful words; they’re strong words. It would resonate with anyone who wore the uniform of our country as I did. I’ve used them before in these types of proceedings. And I thought that perhaps you might like to see me open a window into my character that is not reflected in the application form.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie comes toward the end when the protagonist is asked if whether making someone a knight makes them a better soldier. And he answers, Yes, but not for the reason you might think.
Making someone a knight really doesn’t make them a better soldier. The ceremony doesn’t make them a better soldier, any more than the judicial investiture makes a judge a better jurist or a better person. It is the commitment to the values set forth in that oath, for the knight, symbolized by, in the movie, the lord striking the new knight across the face in token that he shall not forget it.
Or by the jurist who swears to uphold and defend the constitutions of our state and of our nation.
Commissioners, if you nominate me and the governor appoints me, you now know something about my character that is not in the application form. You know that I hold to, aspire to, values that are higher, that are better, perhaps, than any of us are.
In the hope that Victoria Avalon remembers her oath and her values, I’m going to challenge her with them right here.
Speak the truth always, Sir Victoria, even if it leads to your death
Avalon should be able to repeat each one of these truths — in public, in writing, in front of a mirror. Saying them, if she can, would fulfill her oath.
I challenge her to speak them out loud to herself and the public and even to Gov. DeSantis, who has the power to pardon Leo Schofield.
I, “Sir Victoria Avalon,” aspiring to higher and better values, acknowledge:
Convicted murderer Jeremy Scott has confessed multiple times in escalating detail to killing Michelle Schofield in 1987.
Jeremy Scott left physical evidence, a palm print, found on Michelle Schofield’s car after her disappearance.
My office, the 10th Circuit State’s Attorney, considers Jeremy Scott a generally credible murder suspect, having charged him with two different Polk killings in the late 1980s (and convicting him once.)
My office does not consider convicted murderer Jeremy Scott a credible murder suspect in Michelle Schofield’s 1987 killing because … reasons.
No juror in Polk County has ever heard any of the evidence against convicted murderer Jeremy Scott in the Schofield case.
I have personally worked hard to make sure no Polk jury ever hears about the evidence against Jeremy Scott in the Michelle Schofield killing.
Unlike Jeremy Scott, Leo Schofield has always maintained his innocence, for more than 35 years.
There is no physical or eyewitness evidence connecting Leo Schofield to his wife’s murder.
Investigators found no blood evidence in the house where the state claims Leo stabbed his wife over and over again in a fit of rage, which wrecks the state’s theory of the case.
My longtime former boss Jerry Hill spoke an uncorrected falsehood to parole commissioners in 2020 when he said Leo Schofield had confessed to the murder of Michelle Schofield. The exact sentence is: “In September, the defendant sends a letter to counsel admitting to the murder of Mrs. Schofield.” This clearly violates the plain text of multiple Florida Bar rules — and the Bar should address it.
Former prosecutor and current state senator Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, was talking about my work and my morality, and that of the entire 10th Judicial Circuit, when he said: Everything that I’ve seen about this case turns my stomach … I stand by the criminal justice system here in the state of Florida. We’re one of the best on the planet. But there’s a whole lot of doubt right now about how good we are.
Despite all that, I, “Sir Victoria Avalon,” aspiring to higher, better values, do assert:
Leo Schofield, not Jeremy Scott, killed Michelle Schofield, beyond all reasonable doubt
The people of Polk County are not entitled to reconsider their 1989 verdict with the overwhelming evidence against Scott that has emerged since 2004.
Leo Schofield should be condemned and ridiculed at parole hearings for his lack of remorse, despite 35 years of maintaining his innocence without wavering.
Say all that, where we can hear it, Sir Victoria, if your oath means anything to you beyond drama class.
Did Sir Victoria Avalon accidentally help clear a path to Schofield’s exoneration?
Leo Schofield may soon get out of prison on parole for a crime he didn’t commit; but he’ll never be free until he is exonerated.
The knights of Florida justice, like Victoria Avalon and Jerry Hill and the clubby judges of the 10th Circuit, have done all they can, in stomach-turning fashion, to make sure that never happens. They have foreclosed every standard legal path for overturning Schofield’s obviously wrongful conviction.
There are no more cards a defense lawyer can play to get around these failed officers of justice — no clear path towards an impartial legal power considering the full merits of the case. Someone has to make a path to exoneration.
At this point I see only two potential possibilities:
A public expression of conscience from a key player in the case — prosecutor or judge. Somebody has to break.
The brute force of very cynical, gross politics leading to a pardon.
All of my writing about Leo Schofield’s case at this point is about exploring these two paths to exoneration and systemic accountability. Avalon’s May 3 performance is a helpful variable for both possibilities in my view.
In Part 2, I’ll focus on the “very cynical, gross politics” Avalon has now made possible in Schofield’s case. The argument goes something like this:
That “woke” prosecutor who blasted Justices Thomas and Alito for perceptions of “payola,” who said the DeSantis appointment process is insular and rigged, is keeping a wrongfully convicted, devout Christian white man in prison despite overwhelming evidence that someone else did the crime.
If DeSantis decides that narrative is ripe for exploitation politically through an entirely justified pardon, he will not hesitate to wipe out the careers of the entire leadership of the 10th Circuit SAO. You should think long and hard about that, Brian Haas and Jake Orr and Brad Copley. It might be too late for Victoria Avalon to consider it. Go ask Andrew Warren.
And God forbid Trump seize on that narrative to attack DeSantis. He would turn it into this:
Meatball Ron is helping that “woke” prosecutor who blasted Justices Thomas and Alito for perceptions of “payola,” who said the judicial appointment process is politically insular and rigged. Together, they’re keeping a wrongfully convicted, devout Christian white man in prison despite overwhelming evidence that someone else did the crime. Just like the Deep State is persecuting me and J6ers. What’s going on in the free state of Florida? Sad!
It doesn’t matter that Victoria Avalon isn’t a woke prosecutor (that nonsense term has no meaning) or that she lovingly name-checked Antonin Scalia in her interview. Truth doesn’t matter in Florida law at all, which is what Avalon was, in part, lamenting.
Avalon’s act of performative decency accidentally gave DeSantis and Trump good GOP primary reason to openly and viciously politicize Leo Schofield’s case, if either of them realizes it.
No one is more “helpless” — and in greater need of safeguarding — than a wrongfully convicted person
I would prefer that rediscovered conscience, not gross and cynical politics, exonerate Leo Schofield.
I can’t say that Avalon’s empty speechifying gives me hope that she might break. But the personal demands of its logic and morality are undeniable. And one never knows how that works on a person’s conscience.
For now, Avalon and her fellow knights of justice have trapped Leo Schofield in their moral and intellectual cowardice. Leo Schofield is the wrongful prisoner of their institutional and personal self-protection.
But they have also imprisoned themselves.
Until one of them breaks, the Schofield knights must permanently, publicly defend the worst thing any of them have ever done — as lawyers or people.
That probably doesn’t matter to Jerry “Fuck you” Hill, who has no code of honor or decency he claims to live by. But Victoria Avalon does have a personal mythology. She has made it a lesser, but very real prisoner of her unjust Schofield behavior.
Victoria Avalon claims to aspire to “safeguard the helpless and do no wrong” as an oath and value. She has thoroughly betrayed that aspiration to this point in the Schofield case.
Fortunately for Avalon and her mythology, no human being in America is more “helpless” than a wrongfully convicted and imprisoned man or woman. And Leo Schofield is a never-ending slap to her face — “in token” that she not forget her oath.
Will she ever remember it?